Ahmanson Ranch
One of the first major real estate projects to break ground in Southern California in the next century is likely to be one of the most influential.
Formal groundbreaking for the Ahmanson Ranch project, a town-style development on 2,800 acres in the Simi Hills in southeastern Ventura County, will not take place until 2001. However, the project has already achieved historic status for the size of the private-to-public land transfer it produced and for reviving a design concept that marks a major departure from the car-dependent suburban enclave typical of the postwar era.
In the next century, Southern California will have to strike a balance between the need to expand protected open space and the unrelenting pressure to accommodate population growth. (Los Angeles County alone is expected to add 200,000 residents in the next five years.) New homes will have to be built closer to where the jobs are. Projects will have to be designed to reduce dependence on car travel. Building sustainable communities will require the integration of natural resource management into the development process.
In all these respects, the Ahmanson Ranch project shows the way.
Ventura County’s approval of the project came with the condition that five parcels comprising nearly 10,000 acres of mountain land be transferred to the public for open space preservation. Two of these parcels were acquired with $27 million in public funds. Two others were acquired by the Ahmanson Land Co. for $30 million and transferred to public park agencies, as was the fifth parcel, the western half of Ahmanson Ranch itself. Together this land constitutes the largest addition to the park system in Southern California this century.
Building a new town within the Ahmanson Ranch’s remaining 2,800 acres will put 3,050 new homes within 20 minutes of major employment hubs in Warner Center and Thousand Oaks. Such close-in development is better environmentally than continued suburban expansion into ever more remote areas because it reduces commuting time and impact on air quality.
The town’s design further reduces regional traffic by returning to the village approach of the early years of this century, an approach typified by the Northern California community of Carmel. Instead of a mere bedroom community of isolated ranchettes, the Ahmanson Ranch town will cluster homes and place a town center--with shops, offices, a telecommuting center, library, town hall and village green--at the heart of the community.
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The Ahmanson Ranch town will be exceptionally pedestrian-friendly. Seventy percent of residents will be within a 10-minute walk or bike ride of schools, shops and services. In combination with other measures, this will significantly reduce the project’s overall impact on regional traffic.
When fully built, the project is expected to add 37,500 daily car trips to the surrounding street system--20,000 to the east through Victory Boulevard and 17,500 to the south through Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Las Virgenes Road. To minimize the impact of this increase, the Ahmanson Land Co. is committed to invest $14.4 million in regional circulation improvements, including $3.6 million in Los Angeles County communities adjacent to the ranch.
These improvements are expected to fully offset all of the project’s potential traffic impacts except at six intersections, five of which are near Warner Center, where the project’s contribution to traffic is 1% or less.
The sense of responsibility exhibited by Ahmanson in the areas of open space preservation and traffic reduction extends to virtually every other area of environmental concern. This is reflected in an environmental impact report, prepared with such rigor that its conclusions have withstood nearly a dozen lawsuits over the years.
Nonetheless, project opponents continue to rehash claims that have been thoroughly debunked in the environmental review process or in court, where facts count.
One still hears, for instance, that development of the ranch threatens the steelhead trout in Malibu Creek, despite clear evidence in the EIR that mitigation measures will completely protect those portions of the Malibu Creek watershed in the project area.
Another recurring fiction alleges that the ranch may have been contaminated by Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory testing facility, despite the fact that Rocketdyne is in a separate watershed and despite state water and soil studies showing that no toxic contamination associated with Rocketdyne has migrated off-site.
New concerns have arisen in the wake of the discovery in the development area of the San Fernando Valley spineflower, a plant previously thought extinct, and the presence in the East Las Virgenes Creek of the California red-legged frog, a threatened species. Actually, these new discoveries play to the strengths of the Ahmanson Ranch development team--a demonstrated willingness to do the right thing environmentally and an insistence on integrating resource management into the development process. Ahmanson is committed to protecting the spineflower and the red-legged frog and is in the process of developing detailed plans to ensure their survival on the ranch. Ahmanson has gone even further, funding third parties in seed collecting and breeding programs that may allow these species to expand their range.
This is consistent with Ahmanson’s approach to other significant biological resources on the ranch. The developer has created and funded the Las Virgenes Institute, a nonprofit community stewardship organization, to conduct habitat restoration and conservation programs, with a special focus on the Las Virgenes Creek watershed and the ranch’s native grasslands and oak forests.
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Such programs showcase the Ahmanson Ranch project as a model for development in Southern California for the next century--development that contributes to both new housing and open space preservation, design that creates more sustainable ways to live, conservation that honors and protects our biological heritage.
Guy Gniadek is vice president of Ahmanson Land Co., a subsidiary of Washington Mutual Inc., and project manager of the Ahmanson Ranch. He has more than 20 years’ experience in architecture and town planning.
